What Caused The Plague In The 18th Century

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From the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, a series of plagues had come through and killed many people. The first wave alone killed 25 million people, or one third of the Western European population. This series of devastating epidemics created fear, gave rise to spiritual panic, and brought about concerns over exploitation. Europeans did not understand the cause of the plague, which made them fearful. You can see the fear in a letter from the schoolmaster at Deventer in 1484. Being the schoolmaster and losing 20 students, it’s lowering the student population, and more than likely lowering income. Without any cash flow the schoolmaster is worried about the fate of the school. There were many types of fearful concerns and believes on what caused the plague. Erasmus of Rotterdam believed it was the filth in the streets. If nobody was making an effort to clean up streets, there would be no running…show more content…
Lisabetta Centenni was an Italian housewife, whose husband came down with the fever. Sister Angelica del Macchia sent her a little piece of bread that touched St. Dominica, after feeding it to her husband, the fever broke. The remedies they believed where spiritual cured the sick patients. H. de Rochas, a French physician also believed in the spiritual remedies to rid the plague. His book The Reform of Medicine, states: “Plague-stricken patients hang around their necks toads, either dead or alive, whose venom should within a few days drew out either the poison or the disease.” Spiritual remedies were so common and primary in the fifteenth to eighteenth century. Anything that had to do with God they believed might work. M. Betrand, a physician, strongly believed that it was an angry God over a sinful people. People in that time period didn’t believe strongly in natural causes, so they blamed themselves for being
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